Last week, the Chicago Board of Education announced a plan to shut down 50 city schools. It is considered the most sweeping school-closing measure in U.S. history. The city and board contend the action is necessary to address a $1 billion budget crisis.

Visiting the city a dozen times a year doesn’t make one an expert on its educational system, or its budget. But anyone with a brain has to wonder how a city closing schools at least partly due to money is willing to invest $100 million in building a basketball arena for a private university.

Indeed, DePaul has promised a $70 million to help build an arena at McCormick Place in Chicago, but the city is in for $33 million for land acquisition and the city/state-owned Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority is providing another $70 million in construction funds from its bond fund.

DePaul has been playing at the terribly-not-ideal Allstate Arena since 1980. The former Rosemont Horizon is neither attractive nor proximate to DePaul’s campus, and that combination has contributed to the program’s decline to persistent Big East bottom-feeder as well an average attendance of 7,681 this season.

The United Center, which is attractive and more proximate to DePaul’s campus, is probably too large for the Blue Demons to create substantial demand or a cozy homecourt atmosphere. But management could choose to close off the upper deck, and the arena did offer DePaul a 10-year deal to play rent-free at the “Madhouse on Madison.” That wouldn’t be a bad deal for the Demons and would allow the city to spend its arena money elsewhere. Those schools, for instance.

It’s not always that simple, of course. There’s not much simplicity in politics of any sort. But it’s hard to imagine a stranger confluence of events than what occurred in Chicago these past couple weeks. Mayor Rahm Emmanuel could argue that since the NCAA says its mission is educational, so too is the pursuit of a new arena for DePaul’s student-athletes. But it’s hard to imagine many buying that argument.